The Raptors name is a citywide blight, on every level from metaphorical to allegorical to literal.

Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment President and CEO Tim Leiweke, left, listens to Toronto Raptors team president and general manager Masai Ujiri, right, speak during a press conference in Toronto on Tuesday, June 4, 2013.

When you can’t change the quality of the product, the most transparent deflection is to talk about changing “the culture.” Whatever that means.

MLSE CEO Tim Leiweke made several references to “culture” on Tuesday in unveiling new GM Masai Ujiri. Maybe they’ll try berets. Or folk dancing. While they’re reconsidering their roots, they might also make certain they didn’t build the ACC on top of a graveyard.

The only culture change that matters happens in the win column. For the next little while, the Raptors will be doing the other kind.

A uniform change is an easy bait-and-switch. The more pressing issue is the name. The name is a citywide blight, on every level from metaphorical to allegorical to literal. Did these people watch the movie? The dinosaurs lost in the end. This at least makes this performance sinkhole thematically consistent from the jump.

Choosing “Raptors” was the worst decision in naming history since the creation of the Holy Roman Empire, which, as Voltaire pointed out, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

Unlike our mistake, it did sound boss.

The name needs to go, and if we’re really talking about renting a bin and throwing out a bunch of useless junk, it’s the first thing on the pile. Most everything else needs to go as well, but this is top priority. Hopefully, the weight of what follows will crush all memory of it.

Leiweke has brushed up against the issue thus far, touching it lightly. After years of dull acceptance, it has apparently reappeared on the radar.

“This is not imminent by any stretch, but it is something we’ve looked at in the past and are interested in looking at again,” MLSE’s top business-side decision maker, Tom Anselmi, said Thursday. “It will be interesting to see what our fans think, and what we think, when we look at the various options.”

When they had the 1994 contest to determine the team’s name, they settled on 10 finalists. They were, in descending order of awfulness:

Hogs

Beavers

Terriers

Bobcats

Raptors

T-Rex

Tarantulas

Scorpions

Dragons

Grizzlies

Apparently, the only people who entered were farmers and 8-year-old bedwetters suffering from night terrors.

This does remind us how much worse it could have been. The Hogs. God, can you imagine? Especially given the current state of civic affairs.

Go down that list and it’s disaster after disaster. Beavers? Forget about taking kids along on that night out. Terriers? Well, in that case, why not Squirrels — they are indigenous and if you’ve ever come up the wrong side of one, terrifying.

What that car crash of nomenclature proves is that teams cannot be trusted to choose their own names. It always boils down to some grasping marketer piping up at the end of a meeting to point out “You can’t make an action figure out of a Knickerbocker.”

If we’re going to do this thing, the only proper way to do it is an election. Not a poll that results in a top ten chosen by the team. A first-past-the-post race, done in public and done quickly.

Not everyone gets a vote. Only those who’ve been to games. There should be some benefit to grinding through that sort of anguish. Here it is.

One ticket-buying citizen, one vote. They can have a polling day, with a six-week campaign mounted beforehand. The results will be announced in Maple Leaf Square, after which the Raptor mascot will be burned in effigy (minus the guy inside. He’s been the best reason to go to the games for a long time now).

An Auto-da-fe. That’s a cathartic way to split from the past. Ask the Church.

I’m not advocating for any particular name, though I’ll admit I’m not partial to the Huskies. History’s one thing, but this should go some way to capturing the flavour of the city.

It’d be nice to think outside the usual confines of the animal kingdom and effects of nature (i.e. Thunder). It needn’t be a thing. It needn’t be a traditional name in any sense. This is the unique opportunity to entirely rethink what a sports brand is, and to do so through crowd sourcing.

Whatever the city comes up with, it’ll make everyone else angry. It’ll be a festering sore until the team wins something. And then everyone will love it.

The Raptors-for-now should bear that top of mind when they think or talk about culture from here up until the point when they identify one.

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.